Author: Dylan Forest

LONDON––The British wildlife agency Natural England on
November 29, 2013 revoked a license granted to the Department of
Environment, Food & Rural Affairs to cull 70% of the badgers in two
areas of Gloucestershire and Somerset, to see if the culling might help
to reduce the incidence of bovine tuberculosis.
Badgers as well as cattle are susceptible to bovine TB, and
have long been blamed by farmers for failed efforts to eradicate the
disease from British herds.

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2013:
MUMBAI––The Animal Welfare Board of India on November 15,
2013 announced that it will no longer license elephants for circus use,
and will prosecute circuses that use sick, injured, and unlicensed
animals.
The AWBI acted in response to a nine-month investigation by a
team including representatives from the advocacy organizations
PETA/India and Animal Rahat, reported Vijay Singh of the Times of
India.
“PETA/India’s findings will be forwarded to the Central Zoo
Authority for further action,” Singh added.
The Central Zoo Authority in November 2009 decreed that
elephants may no longer be exhibited by zoos and circuses, but had been
unable to enforce the decree against circuses while the Animal Welfare
Board continued to authorize elephant use.
The Supreme Court of India in 2001 upheld a ban on the use of
bears, monkeys, and big cats in circuses. More than 280 lions, 40
tigers, and scores of aging ex-performing bears were transferred to
CZA-accredited Animal Rescue Centres near Agra, Bangalore, Bhopal,
Chennai, Jaipur, Tirupati, and Visakhapatnam. Since many of those
animals are now deceased, some of the Animal Rescue Centre space may
now be converted to house ex-circus elephants.
India has about 3,500 captive elephants, the most of any
nation; a 3,500-year history of elephant use and exhibition; about
28,000 elephants left in the wild, more than half of the total
population of Asian elephants; and the longest record of protecting
both elephants and elephant habitat, beginning about 2,240 years ago.

LILONGWE, Malawi; NAIROBI, Kenya––The Lilongwe SPCA,
Lilongwe Wildlife Centre, the Malawi Department of Animal Health
Livestock Management, and local police on November 8, 2013 confiscated
more than 200 crocodiles from the Koma Crocodile Farm at Monkey Bay,
Mangochi, and filed cruelty charges against the owner.
“There was no food or water for the crocodiles, their cages
had very little shade, and all the ponds were dry,” Lilongwe SPCA
director Richard Ssuna told Sophie Gomani of the Malawi News Agency.

BRUSSELS––The World Trade Organization on November 25, 2013
upheld most of the 2009 European Union ban on the import of seal
products, overturning the ban only when applied to “seal products
derived from hunts conducted by Inuit or indigenous communities and
hunts conducted for marine resource management purposes.”
The WTO ruling allows governments permitting seal hunts the
opportunity to redefine commercially motivated massacres as “marine
resource management,” but those governments would then have to
demonstrate a need for such management that would be persuasive to
international regulators.

“A third-party auditor will visit farms to ensure compliance,
assessing how workers handle animals, whether animals have access to
adequate food and water, and whether treatment is humane,”
summarized Donnelle Eller of the Des Moines Register. “The
requirements are driven by customers including McDonald’s and Whole
Foods.” These are among the biggest buyers from the Tyson Foods
group, which grossed $33.3 billion in sales in 2012.

GAZA, CANBERRA––Amateur videos posted to social media by
witnesses to Eid al Adha slaughters in Gaza on October 15, 2013 appear
to have provided some of the most damning evidence yet of the failure of
the Exporter Supply Chain Assurance System to protect Australian
livestock from abuse after arrival in foreign nations.
Collected by Animals Australia from social media, the Gaza
videos show tethered cattle being chased off a truck to fall heavily
upside down in the street, cattle being stabbed in the eyes, a bull
being “knee-capped” with an assault rifle, and being killed so
ineptly that one bull with a distinctive Australian ear-tag reportedly
suffered 102 separate cuts to his throat before bleeding to death,
remaining conscious all the while.

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2013:
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico––Chihuahua state general prosecutor
Jorge Gonzalez Nicolas told media on November 20, 2013 that police had
arrested suspects Jesus Mendoza Hernandez, 21, and Edgar Lujan
Guevara, 31, in the alleged dogfighting-related murders of a family of
eight, and were seeking a third suspect.
The suspects “took money and three vehicles. It was all
apparently because of a bet made at a pit bull dog fight,” Gonzalez
Nicolas said, contrary to speculation in some media that a dog stud fee
was at issue.
The sum in dispute was reportedly $115.

SHELBYVILLE, Tennessee––A Blount County grand jury on
December 2, 2013 indicted Tennessee walking horse trainer Larry Joe
Wheelon, 68, and stable workers Randall Stacy Gunter, 44, and
Brandon Randall Lunsford, 32, on 18 counts each of aggravated cruelty
to livestock animals and conspiracy to commit the cruelty.
Each faces 13 felony counts plus five misdemeanor counts.
Farrier Blake T. Primm was indicted for one felony cruelty count
and one misdemeanor conspiracy count, both involving the same horse.
The indictments allege that the four men “Did purchase, mix
and/or apply acid or other caustic substances or chemicals to exposed
areas of walking horses, in a depraved and sadistic manner, without
justifiable or lawful purpose, and did purchase, mix and/or apply
compounds, including blistering compounds, to inflict burns, cuts,
lacerations, or other injuries or pain, to the legs or hooves of
walking horses,” in order to force the horses into a high-stepping
show gait called “The Big Lick.”

BRUSSELS, LONDON–– The European Coalition to End Animal
Experiments on December 12, 2013 “cautiously welcomed a decrease of
4.3% in the number of animal experiments carried out across the European
Union,” representing 519,501 fewer animals used than in 2008, when
EU data was last published.
But the coalition attributed the drop to the “economic
climate, as none of the EU member countries have a committed strategy
for reduction in place.”

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